Talks Go On; Strike Averted At 2 Dailies

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Published: December 1, 2006

A strike was averted, at least temporarily, at The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Daily News Thursday night as management and unionized newsroom workers suspended negotiations and agreed to resume their talks Friday morning.

''We're not going to finish tonight,'' Henry Holcomb, president of the Newspaper Guild's local unit, said in a statement during a break in negotiations. ''We will keep talking as long as we are making progress, and we are.''

Brian Tierney, chief executive of Philadelphia Media Holdings, the team that bought the newspapers earlier this year, said in a statement: ''We are all working hard and I believe that a great deal of progress is being made.''

The two sides said earlier that the biggest areas of dispute concerned employee pensions, sick pay and a management proposal that it not be bound by seniority rules when it seeks to make job changes or layoffs.

Nine of the papers' 10 unions agreed to extend their talks for a third time, until Dec. 9. But one union, the Newspaper Guild, which represents the newsrooms, advertising and circulation departments, said it was sticking to its deadline of 12:01 Friday morning.

The other unions said they would cross a picket line if the Guild went on strike, pitting the Guild against its fellow unions on the eve of its strike deadline.

The Philadelphia papers have been watched closely by the industry since they were sold earlier this year to a team led by Brian Tierney, a local business executive.

He recently said that the papers' advertising revenues were so weak that layoffs were inevitable, and that the number of layoffs would depend on what kind of economic concessions the unions were willing to make.